Market adoption of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology has exploded, as users from a wide range of backgrounds and vertical industries have brought this technology into their homes, offices, and increasingly into the public air space. This inflection point has highlighted not only the limitations of earlier-generation systems, but also the changing role WLAN technology now plays in people's work and lifestyles, across the globe. Indeed, WLANs are rapidly changing from convenience networks to business-critical networks. Increasingly users are depending on WLANs to improve the timeliness and productivity of their communications and applications, and in doing so, require greater visibility, security, management, and performance from their network.
In Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) systems and in particular VoIP over WLAN systems there are many points in the network that can cause audio impairments to the end users. For example, congestion or interference associated with the WLAN, or congestion on a WAN connection, may degrade network throughput and hence VoIP performance. Also, there may be networking equipment that is misconfigured or has latent bugs which impair the quality of service provided to real time protocol streams. For VoIP over WLAN calls (hereinafter referred to as VoWLAN), there is the added complexity which arises from user mobility. Since users may often roam between several wireless access points during the course of a call, a quality of service issue may only occur when the user's mobile station is associated with certain wireless access points. For example, poor quality of service may be caused by interference (e.g., a microwave oven) that is near only one of the wireless access points used during the call. In this situation, a network administrator, when attempting to diagnose the problem, may not recognize that the QoS issue only happens in certain areas of the building. Furthermore, that the problem appears to the end-user as intermittent may render it difficult for a network administrator to determine the root cause of an end-user's complaint.
Several enterprises direct efforts to monitor network performance and gather data to facilitate diagnosis of network performance issues. However, the disadvantage of these efforts is that they focus on wired WANs and LANs. Hence, these efforts do not account for user mobility or the RF environment. In addition, prior efforts typically involve end-to-end measurements to assess performance of the network. However, the disadvantage of this is that the measurements do not provide information concerning a single link (i.e., one segment of and end-to-end connection). Furthermore, known diagnostic systems do not address network performance issues related to roaming.
In light of the foregoing, a need in the art exists for methods, apparatuses, and systems that address the foregoing problems and facilitate WLAN diagnostics and management. Embodiments of the present invention substantially fulfill this need.